Hidden agenda - Cal State Northridge's Holloway has twice been Big West sixth woman of the year, but revealing everything about her game has been an evolving process for the 6-foot-4 senior
It was four years ago, but Katie Holloway can't forget.
The college coach, on a recruitment trip to Lake Stevens High in Washington state, proclaimed the highly ranked senior as the missing piece to her women's basketball program. She invited Holloway for an official visit -- a scholarship as part of the deal.
Holloway remembers shifting in her chair at that moment, knowing she was about to reveal what she had staunchly kept concealed for so long.
She wears a prosthetic lower right leg.
Born without a fibula, a defect that wasn't discovered until she was 10 months old, Holloway underwent an amputation before she was 2.
But don't feel out of the loop, she told the coach, because most people didn't know.
The rest seems like slow motion: The recruiter's eyes growing wider with each sentence, glancing at her watch, then shaking hands and walking away. For good.
"They stopped recruiting me," she said. "I felt that was because of my leg."
Not everyone stopped.
The 6-foot-4 Holloway is now the starting center for Cal State Northridge, which four years ago was struggling to retool after winning only five games during the previous two seasons. Northridge coaches, though surprised to learn of Holloway's disability, considered her worth the risk.
"We needed a banger," remembers Carla Houser, an assistant coach for the Matadors. "A back-to-the-basket post player."
Holloway, a senior, averages 10.3 points and a team-high 7.0 rebounds for the Matadors. She was named to the Big West Conference all-freshman team, and the last two years was selected the conference's sixth woman of the year.
Her success on the court and overall maturity have enabled her to become more secure with her situation. She took her biggest strides in the last two years, joining a Paralympics women's sitting volleyball team that is scheduled to compete in Beijing in September.
"If people want to know, I'll just tell them now," she said of her disability. "I'm grown up more, so I don't really care."
That wasn't the case while growing up in Lake Stevens, a small town in the shadows of the Cascades, about 40 miles north of Seattle. Holloway started playing sports at about 4, following in the footsteps of her sister, Chelsey, who is three years older. Their parents, Jeff and Jane, did their best to camouflage Katie's prosthesis and treat the two the same as possible.
